Cornelius Canis

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Cornelius Canis (also de Hondt or d'Hondt ; * around 1506 in Flanders , probably in Ghent ; † 1562 in Flanders) was a Franco-Flemish composer , singer and conductor of the Renaissance .

Live and act

No information has survived about the early life of Cornelius Canis. An existing letter from 1555 on the occasion of his official farewell suggests that his parents lived in Ghent. There were other musicians with similar names, such as Johann d'Hondt, Franz Canis, Gillis de Hondt, Jan de Hondt and Peter Canis, who were active in Ghent or elsewhere during his time; that these were related to Cornelius Canis can only be assumed. He can be proven for the first time in 1526 as a singer at the collegiate church Saint-Auban in Namur . A few years later, in 1532/33, he is documented as a "zangmeester" and teacher of the choirboys at the Church of St. John in Ghent, which belonged to the Onze-lieve-Vrouw-op-den-rade brotherhood . In 1539 or 1540 he is documented as one of 24 collegiate canons at St. Bavo Abbey in the same city.

In 1542 he was responsible for traveling to Spain with four newly recruited choirboys to the court orchestra ( Grande Chapelle ) of Emperor Charles V in Madrid . There he was appointed court conductor in June 1542 to succeed Thomas Crécquillon . Before that, around 1540, Nicolas Gombert had been dismissed as master of the choirboys because of an incident and then the positions of court music director and director of the choirboys were merged, so that Canis continued to take care of the choirboys. The list of band members of April 27, 1547 shows ten choirboys, and a document of June 3, 1553 names twelve choirboys. During this time, the musicians of the court orchestra seldom stayed in one place for a long time because the emperor often went on trips with his court, so stays in Italy, the Netherlands and Austria were not uncommon. Documents from the imperial court prove, for example, trips to Utrecht or Augsburg . Other musicians of this time with ties to the imperial court were Nicolas Payen and the organist Jean Lestainnier .

Canis' growing reputation as a composer was followed by prominent publications of his works. After visiting the imperial chapel in Italy in 1543, the publisher Antonio Gardano published his motet “Ave sanctissima Maria”. A meeting of the Order of the Golden Fleece in Utrecht in January 1546, which was also attended by Charles V, Francis I of France and the English King Henry VIII , probably led to the publication of a collection of chansons by the publisher Pierre Attaignant , which, in addition to a work by Canis also contained pieces by Créquillon and Jacobus Clemens non Papa . In the Catalogus Familiae Totius aulae Caesareae (1547/48) by Nicolaus Mameranus (1500–1567), the court poet of Charles V, “Magister Cornelius Canis, Praefectus sacelli” is at the top of the list of band members. On August 7, 1548, the composer received a special papal perk. A year later, on July 28, 1549, he received four jugs of wine as a reward for accompanying the future regent Philip II to Ypres . After he is called "Zancmeestre vanden coninghinne" here, it was assumed that Canis was perhaps temporarily the conductor of Maria of Hungary , governor of the Netherlands (1531–1555) and music-loving sister of Charles V; however, this position was held by Benedictus Appenzeller . From June 19, 1551 Canis held imperial benefices to St. Bavo in Ghent and from 1553 to the Floresse and Notre-Dame abbeys in Middelburg ( Zeeland ).

From the beginning of 1555 Canis apparently considered retiring, probably out of dissatisfaction with new musical tendencies, and left active service at court in the same year. The Bavarian ambassador to the imperial court, Sigismund Seld, wrote on April 28, 1555 to his employer, Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria, that Nicolas Payen was destined to succeed Canis as Kapellmeister, and promised that the new trend of “ Musica reservata ”would be more effective than before, because Cornelius Canis couldn't get used to it. In a letter dated September 15 of the same year, he reported that Canis had already left the imperial court for Ghent, taking with him generous discounts and complete freedom of travel. This departure took place one month before the abdication of Charles V on October 15, 1555 in favor of his son Philip II. The official list of members of the court orchestra from 1557 notes not only the salaried members but also the persons who have left the previous list and who have died, with Canis in the second Group is listed.

On June 16, 1557 Canis was appointed chaplain to St. Martin in Kortrijk and at the same time as a canon at the Notre-Dame church at the same place. On the same day, however, he renounced the associated benefices in favor of Josse de Mayere. On April 8, 1561, he wrote his will in Ghent and died the following year, 1562, in a place in Flanders that has not been handed down (E. Jas 1997). The earlier assumption that Canis died as chaplain of Emperor Ferdinand I on February 15, 1561 in Prague (E. vander Straeten 1867), is thus refuted by the date of his will.

meaning

Cornelius Canis left two six-part masses , as well as around 30 motets, three hymns and 29 chansons. Most of his work was published between 1542 and 1558, but the two masses, the hymns and some motets have only survived in handwriting. Stylistically, Canis belongs to the generation of composers after Josquin Desprez , who used a wide range of contrapuntal methods with great skill for sacred music . He also took over the consistent use of imitation from his predecessor at the court orchestra, Thomas Créquillon. The balance between distinctly extended melodic phrases on the one hand and text-related shorter sections on the other, which bring about a convincing declamatory change in the overall structure, is particularly typical of his style of movement . Canis also has a preference for the use of existing musical material, such as the upper part or tenor part from movements by Claudin de Sermisy , Jean Courtois , Clément Janequin and Rogier Pathie (around 1510 - after 1565) to create the framework for canonical movements. The upper part of the Paris chanson "Réconfortez le petit cueur de moy" by Janequin appears in Canis as a canon between the two top voices, with the result that a simple chanson is transformed into a complex contrapuntal structure. In his own chansons he also used peculiarities of the Parisian chansons, such as homophony , shorter rhythmic sections and cadenza formulas , and transferred them to the otherwise polyphonic Franco-Flemish movement. Overall, the musical style of Cornelius Canis can be called rather conservative because of its distance from the newly emerging current of the musica reservata .

Works

  • measure up
    • Missa super “Pastores loquebantur” with six voices
    • Missa super “Salve celeberrima” with six voices
  • Motets and hymns
    • “Angeli archangeli troni dominationes” with four voices
    • “Audi filia et vide” with five votes
    • “Ave sanctissima Maria” to five voices
    • “Beatus autor seculi” with four voices
    • “Castae parentis viscera” with six votes
    • “Ceciliam intra cubiculum” with four voices
    • "Clama ne cesses quasi tuba exalta" with four voices (partly attributed to Benedictus Appenzeller)
    • “Dixerunt impii” to five voices
    • “Dixit insipiens in corde suo” to four votes
    • “Domine da nobis auxilium” with four voices
    • "Domine Deus omnipotens" to five votes
    • “Domine Pater et Deus” with four votes
    • “Domine quis habitat” to six votes
    • “Ecce mensurabilis posuisti” with six votes
    • "Ego dormio et cor meum vigilat" with five voices (partly attributed to Clemens non Papa)
    • “Ego dormivi et sompnum sepi” with five voices
    • “Gloria tibi trinitas” to four votes
    • “Invocavi nomen tuum Domine” with five votes
    • “Isti sunt triumpatores” to four voices
    • “Nobilis egregio tenere” with six votes
    • "Nos qui vivimus" for four voices (attribution: Cornelius )
    • “Novum genus potentiae” with four votes
    • “O beata Caecilia” to four voices
    • “O bone Jesu” to four voices
    • "Pastores loquebuntur" to six voices (incomplete)
    • “Quem dicunt homines” with five voices
    • “Regina caelorum” with five votes
    • "Sancte Iesu [= Sancta Maria?], Succurre miseris" to five votes
    • “Si contempsi subire iudicium” with three voices
    • “Tota pulchra es amica mea” to five voices
    • “Tota vita pereginamur honines” with four voices
    • “Veni ad liberandum nos” with four votes
    • “Venit lumen tuum” to four voices
    • "Virgo gloriosa semper evangelium"
  • French chansons
    • “Belle donne moy ung regard” to five votes
    • "C'est a grant tort" to five votes
    • “Cueur prisonnier” with four votes
    • “D'amours me plains” with five votes
    • “En attendant l'espoir de ma maistesse” to three votes
    • “En désirant que je vous voye” to four voices
    • “Faulte d'argent” to five votes
    • “Gens qui parlez mai de m'amye” with five votes
    • “Il estoit une filette” with four voices
    • “Il me suffit de tos mes maulx” to four voices
    • “Je suis aymé de la plus belle” with four votes
    • “Je suis content que aultrement” to four votes
    • “Ma bouche chante, mon cueur pleure” with three voices
    • “Mal et soucy” with four voices
    • “Mariez-moy père” to four votes
    • “Mon petit cueur” to three votes
    • “Par vous seulle a mort m'assault” with four voices
    • “Pour parvenir bon pied” to five votes
    • “Quant je suis ou les aultres sont” with four voices
    • “Réconfortez le petit cueur de moy” with five votes
    • “Secourez-moy madame” to four votes
    • “Si j'avois l'heur d'obtenir allegéance” with four voices
    • “Si j'ay de moy” to four votes
    • “Si par souffrir l'on peult vaincre fortune” to five voices
    • “Si par souffrir pleusieurs maulx evieulx” to five voices
    • “Ta bonne grace et maintien gracieux” with five votes
    • “Tous mes amis” with five votes
    • “Trop endurer” with five votes

Literature (selection)

  • E. vander Straeten: La musique aux Pays-Bas avant le XIX siècle , volumes 1–3, 7–8, Brussels 1867, reprinted 1969
  • G. Caullet: Musiciens de la collégiale Notre-Dame à Courtrai , Bruges / Courtrai 1911
  • D. von Bartha: Problems of Chanson History in the 16th Century. In: Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft No. 13, 1930/31, page 507
  • J. Schmidt-Görg: The Acta capitularia of the Notre-Dame-Kirche zu Kortrijk. In: Vlaamsch Jaarboek voor Muziekgeschiedenis No. 1, 1939, pages 21–78
  • H. Osthoff: The Dutch and the German Song , Berlin 1938, reprint 1967
  • W. Wells: The Sacred Music of Cornelius Canis, Flemish Composer, 1510 / 20–1561 , dissertation at Stanford University 1968
  • H. Rudolf: The Life and Works of Cornelius Canis , dissertation at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign 1977
  • E. Jas: De koorboeken van de Pieterskerk te Leiden , dissertation at the University of Utrecht 1997

Web links

swell

  1. ↑ The music in past and present (MGG), person part Volume 4, Bärenreiter and Metzler, Kassel and Basel 2000, ISBN 3-7618-1114-4
  2. ↑ Marc Honegger, Günther Massenkeil (ed.): The great lexicon of music. Volume 2: C - Elmendorff. Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau a. a. 1979, ISBN 3-451-18052-9 .
  3. ^ The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians , edited by Stanley Sadie, 2nd Edition, Volume 4, McMillan, London 2001, ISBN 0-333-60800-3
personal data
SURNAME Canis, Cornelius
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Canisius, Cornelius; de Hondt, Cornelis; d'Hondt, Cornelis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Franco-Flemish composer, singer and bandmaster of the Renaissance
DATE OF BIRTH around 1506
PLACE OF BIRTH uncertain: Ghent
DATE OF DEATH 1562
Place of death Flanders